DISTRIBUTION OP THE WATER THRUSH 303 



under the names of " Eiver Pink " and " Bessy Kick-up". These 

 notices, including, of course. Dr. Brewer's last and best one, are 

 among the principal accounts we have; for if the long synony- 

 matic list I present with this article be analyzed, it will be found 

 to consist largely of the compilations of name-peddlers, other- 

 wise known as systematists, taxonomists, and philosophers, who 

 describe and redescribe with insufllcient knowledge of what 

 their predecessors have done, and in whose hands natural his- 

 tory becomes not unlike a kaleidoscopic tube, where names, like 

 colored bits of glass, leap into fantastic shapes at the touch of 

 the pen-point. Few indeed of the namers of the many species 

 that have sprung up like mushrooms in the fertile compost-heap 

 of synonymy knew anything of the Water Thrush except as a 

 museum object; and, as if there were not names enough already, 

 several of the French ornithologists, with characteristic viva- 

 city, bestowed a number more. Wilson knew the bird he called 

 Turdus aquaticus, and so doubtless did Bartram when he called 

 it Motacilla fluviatilis. Among the earlier notices, we have 

 several from independent original sources; such are that of 

 Pennant's "New York Warbler", and Buffon's "Fauvette 

 tachet^e de la Louisiane", and Brisson's "Figuier bruii de S. 

 Domiiigue"; and Buffon's bird, figured on the Planche Enlu- 

 min6e 752, afforded the very first technical name of the species, 

 that bestowed in 1783 by the cataloguer Boddaert. 



Very many of the numerous citations I have compiled, how- 

 ever, are those I give to certify the recognized geographical 

 distribution of the species, as vouchers for its occurrence in the 

 widely separated localities which, when duly collated, enable 

 us to map its dispersion and trace its movements. This is 

 always an important subject, and one which, I think, more than 

 justifies the bibliographical matter which may seem to the gen- 

 eral reader to so heavily handicap the present volume, but which 

 is the real ballast of the book if not the most valuable part of 

 the cargo which I bring. By such researches I have traced the 

 spread of the Water Thrush over all of North America, there 

 being few small areas and no large ones whence I have not 

 gathered reports of its presence — througli Mexico and Central 

 America — among nearly all of the West Indies — and for a con- 

 siderable distance into South America. Its latitudinal disper- 

 sion is from Brazil to the Arctic Ocean ; in longitude, it reaches 

 across the northern half of the Western Hemisphere, and per- 

 haps of the southern portion also; though I believe that our 



